Fort Worth police released audio and video Friday related to the fatal shooting of a man by officers outside a convenience store earlier in the week.
About 12:40 a.m. Wednesday, police received two 911 calls about a person with a weapon at the store in the 2500 block of Northeast 28th Street, near Interstate 35W.
Assistant Chief Robert Alldredge said in a recorded update Friday that two employees — one in the store and one watching security footage off-site — called 911. In an edited recording released by police, an employee can be heard telling the dispatcher a man with the gun entered the store and asked her to call police.
“He walked behind the counter and asked me to call,” the employee said.
The employee said the man — identified by authorities as 31-year-old Joe Don Williams — later asked her whether police were coming.
“What if he starts shooting at y’all?” the employee said.
Officers arrived at the store a few minutes after the calls, and found employees and customers running from the building. While some officers directed those people away from the store, other officers went to the west side of the building, “not knowing if there were other innocent people in danger inside the store,” Alldredge said.
As officers neared the building’s side doors, the man fired his handgun twice, police said. Surveillance video from inside the store shows him holding what appears to be a phone as he fires the weapon at an upward angle.
The officers near the west side of the building regrouped behind a shield, Alldredge said.
Roughly 30 seconds later, Williams left the store and began firing at cars leaving the parking lot and at the officers directing them, Alldredge said. Surveillance footage released by police shows him walking out the door and firing the handgun.
Body camera footage shows officers returning fire before one can be heard yelling, “Suspect’s down!”
Alldredge said police administered medical aid to Williams before he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office said his cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds.
No one else was injured in the shooting, police said.
The investigation is ongoing.
